I bought a family of 8 pets in retirement
Pat Simmons, 69, is a writer of poems, short stories, flash fiction and articles. Her work has been published in anthologies and children’s magazines and she has won writer competitions in Australia and the UK.
I’ve packed the Christmas decorations away and checked through my received Christmas cards to see who didn’t send me one. (Hope they have a good excuse!)
My next task was to collect all the scraps of paper that accumulated around the place from the beginning of December, ignored and abandoned until now. A couple of forgotten bills. Woops! An abundance of junk mail and a ridiculous number of lists. Yes, I still write daily lists, mostly shopping lists but I add TV shows that I must record (even though I never seem to get around to watching them), book titles (I’ll never live long enough to read all the books I list), words I like the sound of, people I must email/ring today and so on. You get the idea.
The bills are now paid, the junk mail placed in the recycling bin but the lists – talk about self-discovery! On every shopping list the words “red wine” and “cat food” appear. Time to sit down and reflect on this revelation.
In 2013 my beautiful husband to whom I was married for 45 years died of cancer. I’d retired from my job in children’s services to care for him. My life changed that year and will never be quite the same. However, I moved on, sold the family home and bought a house at Scarborough on the beautiful New South Wales south coast.
Then I needed to sit down and think about what makes me happy. Easy – my family, my friends, reading, writing and animals. So I bought a cat, a lovely grey Devon Rex who I named Gimli the Grey. I decided that Gimli really needed a friend (you can see the pattern forming can’t you?) so I purchased an elegant white Siamese who I named Mr. Meowgi.
I then decided that a dog would also make a great pet and walking a dog is good exercise, isn’t it? So Maggie arrived, a delightful five-year-old French bulldog. If you too, are the owner of a French bulldog, you’ll know that they spend most of their “walk” time just sniffing stuff and very little ground is covered. So much for my exercise idea, ha!
I began to notice that when friends and family visited they could be observed frantically brushing pet hair off their smart black clothes and in some cases sneezing a lot due to pet allergies, but hey, by then it was too late!
These critters were giving me so much pleasure and I was lucky enough to have a beautiful home with lots of space, so along came Fifi, a delightful old rescue pug. There are so many animals needing homes, I just had to add her to the furry family.
The cats were such easy pets and I was fascinated by all the different breeds. So I bought a Bengal kitten and named him Azizi which means “precious one”. I should’ve found a name that means “expensive one” as he became ill not long after I bought him, so vet and animal hospital bills curbed my enthusiasm, and my bank balance for a while. He is now fit and well thank goodness.
People started to say to me, “But now you won’t be able to travel.” Travel, I know, is very important to many retirees but it isn’t high on my list. I feel like I’m living in paradise anyway. Should I change my mind on this one, someone can come and live at my place and mind the menagerie…
A few weeks ago another cat came into my life, a beautiful black and white rescue moggie who I’ve named Oscar and I’m also fostering two feral kittens until their vet work is done and they’re ready for a forever home.
I now recognise the fact that perhaps I am in fact a “Crazy Cat Woman.”
Where does the red wine figure in all this I hear you ask? Well it doesn’t really. I just happen to like red wine!
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